Our plans

Shaping a Healthier Future

Shaping a Healthier Future (SaHF) is the programme to reshape hospital and out of hospital health and care services in North West London.

At present, specialist care is too thinly spread over too many sites and some facilities are inadequate. The changes under SaHF will concentrate specialist hospital services into fewer sites allowing us to provide more senior consultants’ expertise more of the time at those sites, leading to better results and safer services for our area’s two million patients.

Summary of the changes

The existing nine hospitals will be transformed into five major acute hospitals, including West Middlesex Hospital

On the remaining sites there will be further investment in local hospitals at Ealing and Charing Cross, developed in conjunction with patients and stakeholders

There will be a specialist hospital at Hammersmith

There will be a local and elective hospital at Central Middlesex

A major public consultation on the proposed changes was carried out in 2012, and in 2013, the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, agreed that changes to NHS services in North West London should proceed as quickly as practicable.

In line with this, the A&E departments at Hammersmith Hospital and Central Middlesex Hospital closed on 10 September 2014. 24/7 urgent care centrescontinue to operate at both hospitals.

Outline business cases for the hospital sites are currently in development. These cases describe the detailed service changes at each site, and how they can be delivered and the capital required by the programme to make these changes. They also explain how the changes will improve quality, the workforce implications and the plans for making these changes over the coming years.